Names of signatories to Amoris Laetitia letter revealed

The letter asks the cardinals to request a clarification from the Pope that some interpretations of Amoris Laetitia are heretical

The names of forty-five priests and theologians who are asking for a clarification of Amoris Laetitia have been revealed.

The National Catholic Reporter has published the list of signatories to the letter, which has been sent to all 218 cardinals and patriarchs.

They include Fr Aidan Nichols, one of Britain’s most distinguished theologians; the bioethicist Professor Luke Gormally, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life; Fr Giovanni Scalese, the leader of Catholics in Afghanistan; and many other well-known names, including seminary professors and university teachers.

The letter, which has been seen by the Catholic Herald, asks the cardinals to request a clarification from the Pope that some interpretations of Amoris Laetitia are heretical.

The letter does not accuse Pope Francis of false teaching; but it says some passages can easily give rise to interpretations at odds with Catholic doctrine.

It says that a clarification would allow the “many valuable teachings” of Amoris Laetitia to “have their true effect, by distinguishing them from the problematic elements in the document and neutralising the threat to the faith posed by them.”

For instance, the letter asks for a clarification on a passage saying that someone in an “‘irregular’ situation” might “be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin”.

The signatories say a heretical reading would be “that a person with full knowledge of a divine law can sin by choosing to obey that law”.

They cite the Council of Trent and other authoritative Church documents.

The spokesman for the group, Dr Joseph Shaw, told the National Catholic Reporter: “What we’re asking the cardinals to do is to request of the Holy Father that he make it clear that some interpretations are wrong.

“That what was contrary to the faith remains so, what the Council of Trent taught remains the teaching of the church.”

Dr Shaw, a member of the philosophy faculty at the University of Oxford, is one of several British signatories to the document.

Other noteworthy names include the theologian Fr Brian Harrison OS and the Australian scholar Dr Anna Silvas, who has written a thorough critique of Amoris Laetitia.

One of the signatories, Dr Alan Fimister, who teaches at St John Vianney Seminary in Colorado, told the Catholic Herald: “I am constantly approached by people citing this or that passage of Amoris Laetitia and asking how it could be reconciled with the faith as they have received it.” He said that a clarification was necessary to show what was and wasn’t a legitimate interpretation.

Fimister said that when asked to add his name to the signatories, “I couldn’t see how in conscience I could refuse to sign. The faith isn’t a hermeneutical game whereby we find new and interesting ways to give meaning to the same words every few decades, it is the way of eternal life.”

Fimister said he had been “deeply affected” by Archbishop Samuel Aquila’s article pointing out that the martyrs of the English reformation had died for the indissolubility of marriage.

Like many other observers, Archbishop Aquila argued that this teaching was threatened by proposals to admit the divorced and remarried to Communion.

Archbishop Aquila’s article was entitled, “Did Thomas More and John Fisher die for nothing?” Fimister said: “As an English Catholic I feel a sacred duty to do what little I can to see that they did not.”
The full list of signatories, according to the National Catholic Reporter, is below:

Rev David Palmer MA
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham
Chair of Marriage and Family Life Commission, Diocese of Nottingham

Dr Paolo Pasqualucci
Professor of Philosophy (retired), University of Perugia

Dr Claudio Pierantoni
Professor of Medieval Philosophy in the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Chile
Former Professor of Church History and Patrology at the Faculty of Theology of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Member of the International Association of Patristic Studies

Fr Anthony Pillari JCL (Cand.)
Priest of the archdiocese of San Antonio, chaplain to Carmelite nuns

Prof Enrico Maria Radaelli
International Science and Commonsense Association (ISCA)
Department of Metaphysics of Beauty and Philosophy of Arts, Research Director